DISCOVER CAPE TOWN: ITINERARY BO-KAAP, SUNSET LIONS HEAD:-
Just arrived in Cape Town from Frankfurt after an 11-hour journey. This was the first destination of my travel plan around the world for the next 12 months. Most people relax and catch up with sleep. As for me, I was too excited and went to discover Cape Town right away. Here you can read about the Cape Town hotspots I discovered…
Getting to the city center / finding the right hostel
Arriving at the Cape Town Airport, everyone seemed to be catching a taxi to the city center or picking up a rental car. But I decided to take the public bus to get in touch with the locals right away – this is something I love doing. If you want to travel by bus, you have to get a MyCiti travel card for about a 35 Rand deposit (ca. 2,50 USD) and the journey itself costs 50 Rand (ca. 3,50 USD). After a 25-minute journey, I arrived in the city center of Cape Town and made my way to the Cape Town Backpackers, where I decided to stay for the first 2 nights. My honest opinion is not to stay there because it wasn’t really a nice vibe and was too far away from Long Street (where things are happening in Cape Town). I recommend the Long Street Backpackers (via Hostelworld).
Visiting the Muslim area: Bo-Kaap
I checked in and went to get some food and wandered around in the beautiful area the Muslims call Bo-Kaap, where you can find amazing colored buildings. It is not recommended to go by yourself, but for me, it seemed totally fine and I loved discovering the area alone. Later, I found out that tours exist that tell you more about the area and are best for safety reasons.
V&C Waterfront/purchasing tickets for Robben Island prison tour
This is nice to see, so I was on my way to the V&C Waterfront to purchase a ticket for the Robben Island tour. First, I wandered around and from there I got the first view of Table Mountain, which was beautiful but unfortunately covered by a cloud. For the Robben Island Tour, recommended to me by someone in Germany, you can usually book tickets online (Robben Island Tour) but they were fully booked. However, I easily got a ticket for the tour for the next day at 9:00 am for 285 Rand (ca. 20 USD).
Read about the Robben Island Tour experience here at The Nelson Mandela Prison Tour. You may remember that I said that I never buy travel guides or anything else to discover places, so I just started connecting with locals in the street and the hostel, an awesome way to meet people, get insider tips and top recommendations. Read more about how I travel on Travel as I TRAVEL FOREVER.
Hitch-/Hiking to Lion’s Head / beautiful sunset
Later, I met some people in the hostel and we went together to hike up Lion’s Head and watch the sunset. David, another German, tried to organize a taxi, but since it was a rush hour it never arrived to pick us and the time was getting short to make it on time. We waited in front of the backpacker, and then I said that we should try to hitchhike because it was literally up the road – but too far to walk. I used my thumb and not even 3 minutes later, a guy with a Jeep stopped and asked where we wanted to go and gave us a lift – top man! That was easy!
It was a beautiful hike up to Lion’s Head and I was pretty lucky to share this moment with people from South Africa, Australia, Germany, Israel, and Brazil – an awesome mix of globetrotters. I could see Table Mountain from there as we were right next to it. It was still almost fully covered in clouds with a rainbow – so beautiful!
The hike up was really nice and with a couple of breaks in between, it took about an hour. When we arrived on top, we had just missed the sunset, but we still had an amazing view over Cape Town – it was a full moon night.
LIONS HEAD
I TRAVEL FOREVER’s VIEW & RECOMMENDATION
Amazing day, amazing experience and amazing people. I’m so grateful. For the rest of the night, we had drinks, played and danced to music and enjoyed socializing in the hostel.
#TW # SUNSET AT LIONS HEAD
